title: Proving universal common ancestry with similar sequences.
abstract: Douglas Theobald recently developed an interesting test putatively capable of quantifying the evidence for a Universal Common Ancestry uniting the three domains of life (Eukarya, Archaea and Bacteria) against hypotheses of Independent Origins for some of these domains. We review here his model, in particular in relation to the treatment of Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) and to the quality of sequence alignment.
authors.affiliation: University of Vigo, Spain.
authors.forename: Leonardo de Oliveira
authors.initials: LD
authors.lastname: Martins
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Posada
keywords: common ancestry; model selection; tree of life